It’s been a matter of when not if, for the time that Roger Federer would be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and this week, in Newport, Rhode Island, he became the 274th member of the illustrious institution.
The event featured exhibition matches followed by a ceremony, where the 45 year-old couldn’t get through a speech without crying, which was the perfect response in expressing his gratitude to the sport and his loved ones.
The ceremony took place at Newport’s grass horseshoe court, the kind of old-money setting that suits Federer’s image perfectly, and he arrived in a tan suit, which also suits his image perfectly. His wife Mirka introduced him, spoke about his career and what it meant to their family, and delivered a presentation good enough that Federer’s first words on stage were “this is very high level and a tough act to follow.”
The speech ran nearly 30 minutes. He cried when he talked about his childhood hero Stefan Edberg. He cried when he talked about his longtime coach Severin Luthi. He cried when he got to the part about Mirka, paused, and said “oh gosh, this is such a mess.” At one point he told the crowd he needed tissues and sunglasses to get through it. The crowd, predictably, loved every second of it.
The numbers behind the induction are worth restating, even if most people who follow tennis already know them. Twenty Grand Slam singles titles, the first man in history to reach that figure. Eight Wimbledon championships, a record that still stands. Six Australian Opens, one French Open, five consecutive US Open titles from 2004 to 2008. A career total of 103 singles titles. Two hundred and thirty-seven consecutive weeks as world number one. A career Grand Slam, placing him among only eight men in history to have won all four majors.
None of those numbers fully capture what made Federer the subject of genuine affection rather than just respect, which is rarer in sport than it sounds. The one-handed backhand, the ease of movement at the net, the sense that he was always playing within himself even when he was dismantling the best players in the world. The way he behaved toward opponents, toward officials, toward ball boys and girls, which he made a point of thanking in his speech. The records are the argument for the Hall of Fame. The other things are the reason people were crying in Newport alongside him.
He finished by encouraging the next generation to keep taking the game to new levels.
